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Current Affairs

Plans to generate electricity from the world's first series of tidal lagoons have been unveiled in the UK. The six lagoons - four in Wales and one each in Somerset and Cumbria - will capture incoming and outgoing tides behind giant sea walls, and use the weight of the water to power turbines. A £1bn Swansea scheme, said to be able to produce energy for 155,000 homes, is already in the planning system. Energy Secretary Ed Davey says he wants to back the project. The cost of generating power from the Swansea project will be very high, but the firm behind the plan says subsequent lagoons will be able to produce electricity much more cheaply. It says the series of six lagoons could generate 8% of the UK's electricity for an investment of £30bn. As well as Swansea, the proposed lagoon sites are Cardiff, Newport, and Colwyn Bay in Wales; Bridgwater in Somerset; and West Cumbria. Each will require engineering on a grand scale. In Swansea, the sea wall to contain the new lagoon will stretch more than five miles and reach more than two miles out to sea. The cost would be funded by electricity bill-payers under the existing government scheme to promote home-grown, low-carbon energy. Tidal Lagoon Power is in negotiations with the government over how much it can charge for its power. It wants £168 per MWh hour for electricity in Swansea, reducing to £90-£95 per MWh for power from a second, more efficient lagoon in Cardiff. 'Energy dance' The £90 figure compares favourably with the £92.50 price for power from the planned Hinkley nuclear station, especially as the lagoon is designed to last 120 years - at a much lower risk than nuclear. Mr Davey told BBC News: "I can't make a decision on this yet because discussions are ongoing. But I'm very excited by the prospect of tidal power. "We have got some of the biggest tidal ranges in the world and it would be really useful if we could harness some of that clean energy." The lagoons operate a system similar to a lock gate to alter the water level either side of a sea wall. When the tide starts to rise, gates in the wall are closed and water builds up outside the lagoon. When the tide is full outside the lagoon, the gates are opened and water rushes past the turbines to fill up the lagoon. When the tide turns to go out, the gates are shut to hold the water inside the lagoon. As low tide is reached outside the wall, the gates are opened to generate power again as water flows through from the raised water level in the lagoon. Power firms also like the idea of lagoons-energy because, unlike power from the sun and wind, it is predictable. Turbines capture energy from two incoming and two outgoing tides a day, and are expected to be active for an average of 14 hours a day. Mark Shorrock, CEO of Tidal Lagoon Power, told BBC News: "We have a wonderful opportunity to create energy from the dance between the moon and the earth. "It is admittedly rather expensive to begin with but as time goes on and the capital costs are paid off it becomes incredibly cheap." A previous plan for a barrage on the River Severn to create tidal power was scuttled after environmentalists protested it would prevent the daily exposure of mud flats vital for wading birds. The Swansea lagoon plan is more widely accepted as it does not impede estuaries and allows the tides to flow as normal - albeit delaying each tide inside the lagoon for a few hours. Gareth Clubb, Director of Friends of the Earth Cymru, said the group is broadly in favour of the Swansea lagoon. "It's not unqualified approval - we want to make sure that the environmental impact can be managed," he said. "But if it helps us to close Aberthaw power station - one of the most polluting in the world - it'll be a good thing." Anglers, though, fear the impact of the lagoon on fish migrating to spawn in local rivers which are only recently recovering from generations of pollution. Phil Jones, who fishes on the River Tawe, said the plan had not been questioned "loud enough or widely enough". "We would very strongly oppose any plans for this and other lagoons down the South Wales coast," he said. The firm agrees some migrating fish will stray into the turbines, but project the numbers will be tiny, and that the new sea wall will benefit fish by creating its own reef habitat. By Roger Harrabin BBC environment analyst. more

The Cyber Gallery

Pierre Huyghe ~ "We should celebrate those who have not received proper recognition."

Photography

Edouard Boubat, Enfants, Montmartre, 1948.

The Super Rich

The super rich should be using their money to improve the lives of the long suffering British public this is our country and if you want the privilege of living here wallowing in the good life and our goodwill you should be helping rebuild our lives by contributing to society, and taking the burden off the middle class tax payers. No we don't want more luxury homes built for the idle rich. As for the government you have created this situation now do something about it. The rest of us have been happy to laugh at the farce that is London. We don't want your ideology permeating into the rest of our country. You politicians, you forget who you are, you have been put into a privileged position by the British people and you are pandering to the rich and corporations. Yes, keep your favoured super rich in London. We don't want their influence on our society. What the British people need is opportunity, good jobs and starter homes for young people, homes that can be improved as their family grows, no they don't want to rent why should they put their well earned money into the hands of the already rich greedy landlords. Let everyone have the chance of a decent good life. Don't segregate children at five years old into the ones who will have a good life and the ones who will serve. Every person deserves respect for the work they do. Frankly we are sick of eating cake and a guillotine on the lawn of the Tower of London seems like an option.


The Super Rich Episode I
The Super Rich Episode II

Liberty

Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not why not.

Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective.

All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate.

The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others.

~ Isaiah Berlin.

We should be able to do as we like as long as we do not harm others.

In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.

Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

Every man who says frankly and fully what he thinks is so far doing a public service. We should be grateful to him for attacking most unsparingly our most cherished opinions.

~ John Stuart Mill.